My novel *Rabbits* is out today in paperback. I feel you should definitely buy it. Here are some of the lovely things readers have said about it over the last few months.

“Zohran Mamdani is Ken Livingstone.” @Dannythefink explains. 🗳️ How To Win An Election 🎧 pod.fo/e/34c914 🎙️ @HugoRifkind

"It was a bit surprising to me that he behaved in the way that he did." @Dannythefink responds to the “puzzling” backlash to his views on the Greens and @ZackPolanski. 🗳️ How To Win An Election 🎧 pod.fo/e/34c914 🎙️ @HugoRifkind

“Cherie thought it was ok and Tony said, well that's because really she's from Liverpool.” Sally Morgan remembers the panicked scenes inside No 10 when John Prescott punched a protestor. 🗳️ How To Win An Election 🎧 pod.fo/e/3474b1 @HugoRifkind | @WilliamJHague

We've discussed this with @Dannythefink and @pollymackenzie on How To Win An Election - and how Cameron stopped it because he knew "in a mystical way" it wasn't something Tories do... pod.fo/e/33a425

God, the drama.

However hard your job is, imagine how much harder it would be if you had Margaret Thatcher standing next to you half the time, loudly telling everyone how much better she'd do it.

“If there really are 100 different things under consideration, what it suggests to me is a government with absolutely no strategy." The amount of speculation about the budget is “damaging”, says Times columnist Paul Johnson. @PJtheEconomist | @HugoRifkind

“Every policy Reform put forward tends to collapse when it touches with reality.” Nigel Farage’s economic policy "isn't thought out" and will not be “very popular” among other Reform members, says Times columnist @SebastianEPayne @HugoRifkind | @CharlotteIvers | #TimesRadio

I hope you enjoy our special episode on the Conservative election campaign of 2001 as much as we enjoyed recording it. It was great to share reflections with our special guest and my old boss @williamjhague . He’s very thoughtful on what we got right and where we went wrong.

"You could not control her." Margaret Thatcher’s occasionally “disruptive” and "belittling" interventions would, “if not blow you up, at least blow you back” recalls @WilliamJHague. 🗳️ How To Win An Election 🎧 pod.fo/e/3474b1 @HugoRifkind | @Dannythefink

“In my room in Cambridge with about 30 of my friends, all of whom cheered as they watched my father lose his job on his telly.” @HugoRifkind recalls watching his dad, former foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind, lose his seat. 🗳️ How To Win An Election 🎧 shorturl.at/4Ha5f

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

Coming up later today at Cheltenham 🎙️ 🇺🇸 Tracking Trump - @thetimes panel with @hugorifkind @joshglancy + Stephanie Baker cheltenhamfestivals.org/even…

Looking forward to joining this panel to unpack Trump’s second term at @cheltfestivals on Wed. Oct 15 with @hugorifkind @katyballs and @joshglancy tickets here: cheltenhamfestivals.org/even…

“It’s pure mummy issues, isn’t it?” The “Thatcher worship” at Conservative conference makes the party look like a “cargo cult” says @HugoRifkind. 🗳️ How To Win An Election 🎧 pod.fo/e/33a425 @Dannythefink | @PollyMackenzie

“How can it possibly be the case that people don't know this? But they really don’t.” Have voters actually forgotten all about Liz Truss? 🗳️ How To Win An Election 🎧 pod.fo/e/33a425 @HugoRifkind | @Dannythefink | @PollyMackenzie

“My father in law was behind that door, forming what could only be described as a human barricade.” @grantshapps describes the terrifying moment his father in law came face to face with the terrorist who attacked a synagogue in Manchester last week. @HugoRifkind

Just left synagogue briefly and read the news in detail. Sickening, surreal. For as long as I recall a fact of Jewish life has been security duty: ordinary lay members standing outside shul to create a physical and psychological deterrent against events like this. One always wonders - as I did recently, standing in a high-vis vest after agreeing to a far-too-irregular shift on a Shabbat morning, and as my wife has done far more often - how necessary that presence is. I was in Pittsburgh shortly after a white nationalist assassinated worshippers at a progressive synagogue, I've gone through what feels like military security to get into a shul in Sweden, I was in Paris days after a jihadist sought to murder shoppers at a kosher supermarket. And of course I've been in bomb shelters in the Holy Land. Britain has always felt different - a place where people, mercifully, do not have to die for being born Jewish. It is, by most objective measures, one of the best, possibly the best, places in the world to be Jewish, now or at any time in history. Yet who could say the last few years have not challenged that? Who today could say it is not necessary for us to stand outside our synagogues, waiting for an event like this befall us, hoping but not quite knowing this day will pass like all the others. I always find it remarkable that on the two occasions I've been to JW3 (London's Jewish community center) since  October 7, on every occasion, people driving down Finchley Road have hooted or screamed abuse at the queue of elderly folk shuffling in - I posted about both incidents out of some tiny sense of obligation, knowing they formed part of a bigger story, even if my Britishness, and Jewishness, both made me want to do the opposite, to ignore and suppress it. Until recently, our High Holy Days machzor - or prayer book for Yom Kippur - had remained the same since the 70s - written largely by Germanic Jewish scholars in the immediate shadow of the Holocaust, full of words and poems trying to make sense of that event. Seeing footage of a body soaked in blood outside a shul in Manchester, it feels like the penumbra of that period hover over us a little more today. On Yom Kippur the customary greeting is "Gamar Chatima Tova" - in short, may you be inscribed in the book of life for the following year. Which is why this attack, on our holiest day, is such an unimaginable affront to Jewish life in our country.

🗳️ BONUS How To Win An Election! Hugo Rifkind, Sally Morgan, Daniel Finkelstein and Polly Mackenzie unpack everything from Keir Starmer's speech, live from the Labour Party conference. Listen now: pod.fo/e/334474 @HugoRifkind | @Dannythefink | @PollyMackenzie

Meanwhile, I'll be broadcasting on the @TimesRadio stand from 10-1. Turn right then left after the giraffe.